


The Preferred Option

by gaslightgallows (hearts_blood)



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Protective Crowley, Worried Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 00:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19779862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_blood/pseuds/gaslightgallows
Summary: Crowley has second thoughts about this whole “swap the baby” business.





	The Preferred Option

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: “So you're just going to be snide. No helpful hints?” (meldanya44)
> 
> I have not thought through the implications of this idea and I have no plans to. I’ll leave that to other writers, I just wanted to write something silly. But if any of you want to run with this, send me a link! :D
> 
> If you're over on Tumblr, please consider following me at [gaslightgallows.tumblr.com](https://gaslightgallows.tumblr.com/) for more fic, reblogs about writing, and lots of randomness.
> 
> I also write original fiction! You can find it at [aflinley.com](https://www.aflinley.com/).
> 
> Thank you for reading and especially for commenting. Comments are love. ♥

Hell broke off contact and Crowley wrenched the Bentley out of the path of an oncoming lorry. In the backseat, the Antichrist began to wail. He sounded like any other baby: shrill, complaining, scared, and ancient. 

Crowley resumed his muttered cursing, and frantically debated what to do. 

The obvious choice was to do exactly as he’d been told. Drop off the baby at St. Beryl’s, let the nuns make the swap, warn Aziraphale, and then get on with the rest of his life on Earth, which had just become significantly and abruptly shortened. 

Aziraphale. That was the other option. 

He grimaced, weighing his choices and how much trouble he was willing to get into for the sake of Earth, humanity, his own skin, and the squawking little grub in the back seat. 

The Bentley’s wheels scrunched on the gravel drive of Tadfield Manor. Crowley grabbed the basket and unfolded himself from the car. 

There was a man standing in the courtyard, attempting to smoke a pipe with as much finesse as a buffalo trying to use chopsticks. “Oh,” he said, sounding like a well-intentioned pullover, “you’ve left your lights on.”

Crowley snapped his fingers irritably. 

“That’s jolly clever. Is it infrared or something?”

“Has it started yet?” He didn’t know who the human was and didn’t much care, but he was there and he looked uncomfortable, so clearly he knew something. 

“Yes. They made me come out here—”

Probably the father, then. “How far along?”

“I think we were...” The fellow swallowed and stiff-upper-lipped at Crowley. “Getting on with it, doctor.”

“Right. What room are they in?”

“Room Three.”

“Room Three...” Crowley slipped inside and mostly dismissed the expectant father from his mind. He was still thinking, thinking, thinking... 

He didn’t want Armageddon. He didn’t want war. War was messy and it stank and it ruined the nightlife and made decent wine hard to get. He didn’t like hurting people. (Bit of a design flaw for a demon, he knew, but then, he hadn’t always been a demon.) True, he enjoyed annoying them quite a lot (which was a bit of a design flaw for an angel, but that wasn’t his fault), but mostly he liked the things they invented, like alcohol and rock music and fast cars. He liked their creativity and imagination, things that he possessed in abundance and that would be gone forever if Hell won the final battle. 

Or if Heaven won, for that matter. 

And there were other things that would be gone, crepes and sushi and classical music and old bookshops and walks on the pier at Brighton, all things that Crowley didn’t get much personal pleasure out of but which gave Aziraphale so much delight. 

The baby had gone quiet, and for a moment, Crowley had a very strange feeling towards the thing. The Antichrist. The Adversary. The Prince of Darkness... 

The boy. The child. 

_He’s just a baby. He’ll just be a kid when... He doesn’t deserve this. Why him?_

A nun in a pointed cowl hurried by. Crowley’s orders were to hand the basket over and hoof it out so that the switch with the American ambassador’s child could be made. 

Instead, he clutched the wicker handle more tightly, and again felt the strange surge of emotion. 

Protectiveness. 

It would all be gone. No more humans. No more children. No more Queen, no more miso soup, no more Velvet Underground, no more first-edition Oscar Wilde. 

No more seeing Aziraphale smile. 

Well, that settled it. The angel was always his preferred option. 

He got the nun’s attention (Sister Mary Talkative, or something like that), and conveyed to her that she was to take the basket to Room Three, leaving her with the impression that she had been entrusted with the Son of Satan and that she was to make the swap herself. 

The nun nodded conspiratorially, and then went about her unholy business. The basket would soon vanish from her hands and her memory. The son of Arthur and Dierdre Young, who Crowley was entirely unaware of, would be ignored by the nuns and left peaceably with his parents. The ambassador’s child would be taken from his mother, wrapped in a different-coloured blanket and returned, and for eleven years, no one would be the wiser. 

Surely eleven years would be enough. 

Crowley hurried past the bewildered father in the courtyard (absently noting that he seemed awfully normal for an American), set the basket carefully on the front seat this time, and drove off like a bat out of hell. 

He tried calling Aziraphale on his mobile, was told the London network was down, groaned loudly at himself, and then stopped at the public call box in the middle of Tadfield’s darkened center. 

The angel wasn’t surprised to hear from him. He must’ve been tipped off by his side. 

“So, St. James’ Park, then? Tomorrow afternoon?”

“No. I’ll be at the shop tonight.”

“Crowley, you can’t drive that fast—”

“Scotch, angel. We’re going to need it.”

He rang off and got back into the car. Yielding to an impulse, he opened the basket to peek in at the baby. 

He was sound asleep. 

Crowley pulled the seat belt through the basket’s handle and fastened it. He never used them himself (and indeed, the Bentley hadn’t possessed seat belts until he decided the Antichrist needed one), but it couldn’t hurt to be cautious. 

It might save them all, in the end. 

*** 

“You did _what?!_ ”

Aziraphale’s eyes went wide as saucers, and his pale hair positively quivered with astonishment as he stared at the basket on his desk. 

“I left the ambassador’s kid where he was and brought the... the other baby here.”

“In the name of all that’s holy—”

“So you're just going to be snide? No helpful hints?”

“— _why_? I mean, what possessed you to...” Aziraphale looked around nervously and lowered his voice. “To kidnap the Antichrist?”

“Because he doesn’t have to be the Antichrist. He’s just a baby. He’s not evil. He’s not good, either, he’s just... he’s innocent.”

“He was conceived with one purpose in mind: to end everything. We can’t hope to avert that.”

“Why not?” Crowley downed his whiskey and stooped over the basket. He turned back the lid and showed Aziraphale the sleeping infant. “Look, is that a demon? Is that the heir to all the circles and pits of Hell?”

Aziraphale flicked his eyes reluctantly at the baby. “Well... no... not yet...”

“Exactly. Not _yet_. He’s still got a chance.”

“...What precisely are you proposing, Crowley? That we find a nice normal family to take in the future Slayer of Souls? Or that we... that we what? Raise him ourselves?”

Aziraphale burst into loud, nervous laughter, which faded and turned into horror when he saw that Crowley was looking at him very steadily. 

“Oh no. No no no.” 

“Why not?”

“Weh—because—Crowley, I can’t have a baby in the shop! And I haven’t anywhere to put one, unless you expect me to keep him under the sink in the back.”

“I’ll keep him at my place. Or we can get a flat together.”

“I am reasonably sure that both of our respective head offices would notice _if a demon and an angel began cohabitating._ ”

Crowley’s face split into a grin. “You think? We’ve done it before and they’ve never mentioned it, to me, anyway. Remember? We went on a year-long Grand Tour together, after the Reign of Terror. Shared all sorts of lodgings. Houses, flats, rooms, beds – and it was fine. We could do it again.”

“It’s ludicrous! It’s—”

The infant Antichrist chose that moment to wake up, and wail at the very top of his lungs at the noise and the fact that his nappy was sodden and that he was very, very hungry. 

“Oh God, Crowley, what do—?”

Crowley rolled his eyes and gestured to the desk, which promptly filled with nappies, wipes, barrier cream, and an assortment of bottles. Aziraphale pushed back from the desk in horror. “Well, just.. get on with it, then.”

He watched in astonishment as Crowley very deftly cleaned and dressed the tiny boy and then perched on the corner of the desk with the baby in the crook of his arm to feed him. 

“How?” asked Aziraphale weakly. 

Crowley shrugged. “Wonderful little agents of chaos, kids. Been fascinated with ‘em since Eve’s first, so I’ve picked up a few things.”

“Ah.”

“Mmm. Shame how that all turned out. Cain and his brother. Damned shame.”

“Yes... yes. It was, rather.”

They fell silent, content to watch the baby nurse. 

When he was finished, and had emitted one or two satisfactory burps, Crowley rose. “Hold out your arms.”

“Oh no, no, absolutely not.”

“He’s not going to set you on fire, angel.”

“No, I – I’ve never been good with babies.”

“No better time to learn.” Crowley ignored his further protests and settled the baby into Aziraphale’s arms, helping him to adjust his position. 

The baby looked up sleepily at Aziraphale. “...Oh...”

“Mhmm.”

“So... we’re keeping him, then?”

“Mhmm.”

“He’ll need a name.”

“First baby raised by an angel and a demon. Better make it good.”

And so the Antichrist, who ought to have been named Adam Young, was instead named Adam Fell. 

Adam Anthony Fell, to be precise.


End file.
